“Uri, please,” I say desperately, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I—”
He rips his arm free. “What the hell do you want from me, Alyssa?”
I cringe. What do I want from him? Those eyes of his are weapons in their own right. “I want… I want you to stay.”
For a moment, I think he’s trying to hug me. Then his fingers twist into the hair at the back of my head and I realize what he’s really trying to do. I wince as he yanks my head back and glares down at me.
“‘Stay’？” he growls, his face only inches from mine. I should be terrified but strangely, his proximity is making it easy to ignore my fear. “I can barely even look at you.”
My throat is a solid brick, every breath an agonizing effort. “I know this is my fault,” I whisper to him. “And I would do anything to make it right. I’d take her place if I could.”
Something ripples across his face. I barely catch it before his lips fall hard on mine. It’s the most violent kiss we’ve ever shared. It tastes like salt and desperation, like anger and pain. I lap it all up, absorbing it all, dreading the moment when it will end.
And it does end, a second later. When he lets go and glares down at me as though I just tricked him into doing what he chose to do himself.
“No. No. You’re not doing this to me anymore. You want to fuck something?” he hisses. “Go fuck your toys.”
Then he pushes me away and, before I’ve gained my footing, the door swings shut. I stumble back into my bed and hide underneath the covers.
But there’s no hiding from my thoughts. There’s no hiding from fear. There’s no hiding from the pain.
So I lie in bed—and endure.
8
URI
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.
I jerk awake in a bleary daze. I must’ve fallen asleep at my desk, right on top of a sheet of contact numbers for informants I spent the night calling to accrue as much data as humanly possible about slave ring activity in the city.
I glance at the time and curse under my breath. That’s three hours wasted on sleep. Useless, worthless sleep that gets me no closer to Polly.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.
The sound is my phone vibrating with a call. It’s an unknown number, which means it’s definitely one of my informants. I grab the phone and do my best to iron out the sleep from my voice.
“Mr. Bugrov, this is Fredrich.”
“What do you have for me?”
“Unfortunately… nothing.”
The word feels too cruel to be true. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’？”
“I poked around all the active auctions taking place last night, sir. There was no girl who matched the description you gave me.”
I grit my teeth together. “What about the next few days?”
“There’s only two taking place that I know of. One uptown, one downtown. I did manage to get my hands on the catalogs. I’ll send both to you now. If she’s not on those lists, then either it’s a private sale or she’s somewhere else entirely. I’m afraid we’ve exhausted every other possibility there is.”
“Send me the lists. I’ll look over them now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up and I watch my phone like it’s a ticking time bomb until it pings. I open the text thread and open the first of two documents he’s sent me. There are thirteen girls on the downtown auction block. None of them are my sister.
I move on to the uptown list. Six girls. No Polly.
Fuck me.
I stand up as new rage floods through me. I need to punch something. And I know just the punching bag to use.
I storm downstairs, through the too-empty hallways of my home, and burst outside into the gardens. It’s cold outside but I barely feel the pinch as I make my way towards the shed.
This mudak is going to talk—one way or another.
I turn on the brightest lights and storm down the steps. Alan is writhing on his thin mattress as though the light is physically hurting him. Boris, on the other hand, is sitting stoically on his iron chair, restrained with barbed wire at the wrists and ankles, looking at me through narrowed eyes that aren’t the slightest bit disturbed. It’s like he’s been biding his time, waiting for me to show up.
“Back again so soon, Uri?” Boris mumbles with a self-satisfied smile. “Must’ve missed me terribly.”
Alan struggles upright, eyes wild and afraid as he watches, wondering which of them I’m going to go for first.
I stride to Boris. “Who did you sell my sister to?”